


The Star Spangled Man

by triskele_93



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Mild Language, absolutely no coherent timeline whatsoever, the author certainly doesnt, who knows where this lands in the mcu
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:54:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25017322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triskele_93/pseuds/triskele_93
Summary: When international student Rosie decides to study in America, she thinks life will be a breeze. Until she needs to write a paper about a leading figure in American history. Enter Steve Rogers aka Captain America himself. But as Rosie gets to know him better, she suddenly realizes that being Captain America is not all it's cracked up to be.....
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers & Original Character(s)
Kudos: 2





	The Star Spangled Man

Rosie was in over her head. Not only had she decided to travel to a different country to study for a year, she had chosen to travel to America of all places. Everything was so much bigger, and faster, and louder than she was used to, so much so that she often felt overwhelmed by it all. And on top of that, she had an impossible assignment to complete and not a lot of time to complete it in. How on Earth, was a girl from a small village in Wales supposed to know about a great figure of American history? She could choose someone like Abraham Lincoln, but half of her class had chosen him. The other half had chosen Alexander Hamilton, much to the obvious horror of their professor, who clearly didn’t agree that a rap-filled musical was an appropriate basis for a term paper. She wanted to be different, but she didn’t want to spend the rest of the year researching someone that nobody had ever heard of, just to scrape by with an alright grade and a residual headache. This isn’t what she had come here for, dammit! But then again, this is what happens when you sign up to an American History class, can’t exactly write about the titan that is Tom Jones and expect to get away with it. 

She could barely contain her frustration as she looked down at the piece of paper in her hand, which outlined exactly what her professor expected from this paper and how best to achieve that. Step one was ‘Pick a known figure from American history’. She had already failed step one. She dropped the paper onto the table in front of her and quickly dropped her head on top of it, groaning loudly as she did so. There was silence for a few seconds before a hand dropped gently to her shoulder. Turning her head, she caught sight of her roommate giving her a sympathetic stare, tempered slightly by the small smile that was playing about her lips. Rosie turned her head so she was facing down again, and banged her head against the table. The hand that was gripping her shoulder slapped the back of her head and then left, leaving her feeling slightly bereft. She lifted her head, and sat up straight in her chair, staring at the retreating form of her roommate, who was walking into their kitchen.

Rosie had met Amara on their first day, when their orientation supervisor had bounced over to her and pulled her across the room to meet her roommate. Amara was a beautiful girl, with dark skin that seemed to catch the light and with playful eyes that always gave her the look that she had heard a particularly funny joke and couldn’t wait to share it. She usually wore her hair in two braids running down her back, but that had changed a couple of days ago when she had disappeared for the day and came back with her hair in a large quantity of smaller braids. These braids had now been pulled up and were being secured by what looked like an orange scarf on the top of Amara’s head. 

Rosie and Amara had become fast friends, which was only helped by the fact that they had to live together. They knew when to respect the boundaries set by the other, they knew when the other needed to vent and they knew not to take anything too personally. What was said in the apartment, stayed in the apartment. It probably helped that they were the exact opposite of each other in every conceivable way, but what would Rosie know about that. She was the idiot who had managed to forget about an entire paper that she needed to write. Amara was pulling up a chair at their cramped dining table with a bottle of water and a bag of grapes in her manicured hands. As she dropped into her seat, Rosie stole a couple of the grapes, savouring the light, sweet flavour as she bit into them. 

“So, what’s your problem?”

Amara pulled the bag of grapes closer to herself and pulled a couple off the stems, popping them into her mouth individually. Rosie groaned again and shoved the paper towards her, resting her elbow on the table and cupping her chin in her hand as she did so. Amara quickly glanced at the essay outline, raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow and looked back up at Rosie.

“I don’t see how that’s a problem.”

Rosie fixed her with a glare.

“Of course you don’t. You’re American, this is probably second nature to you. I, on the other hand, couldn’t tell you anything about anyone from your history unless you want me to attempt to rap ‘Guns & Ships’.”

“I honestly do not. Just Google ‘famous American people in history’, pick someone off the list and write about them. Or write about someone you’ve been taught about, and earn brownie points with your professor. That’s what my little sister did when she wrote her paper about Bruce Banner.”

Rosie frowned. 

“You’re sister is way too advanced, do you know that?” 

Amara nodded and started to doodle on the paper. They sat in comfortable silence for a little while before Amara’s phone started to ping. She reached into her pocket, dropping Rosie’s pen as she did so. She quickly glanced at the screen, before scoffing and putting the phone down again. Rosie jerked her head towards the offending item.

“What’s up?”

“Oh, nothing really. Only that Captain America has been spotted getting coffee and he’s with a woman that is not the Black Widow. The internet is freaking out, as per. Which is insane really, the fuss should have died down about him by now.”

Rosie started to laugh softly. She could not get over the fact that superheroes were a thing, let alone the fact that there was one named “Captain America”. She always thought it was a little on the nose, to be honest. But who was she to judge. She had just started to pick at the skin around one of her nails when an idea hit her, like a bolt out of the blue.

“I could write about him! Captain America! Like, it’s obvious to choose him but hey, at least there will be plenty of source material on him!”

Amara pursed her lips thoughtfully, clicking the end of Rosie’s pen as she did so. 

“That could work. Although, you’ll have to find a whole new angle to write about. Almost every single aspect of his life has been written about before so your essay will need to be something incredible to even make a dent.”

Rosie rolled her eyes, already scrawling down ideas in her small notebook. She would definitely need to go to the library to take some books out, maybe do a search for some of the other papers that had been written about him, maybe watch a couple of interviews, or even one of his old war films.

“Don’t worry, it’s not like it’s going to be published. Besides, people are always writing the same stories about people. How hard could it be?”

**********************************************************

The papers were quickly stacking up around Rosie’s head as she sat at the cramped table in a dimly lit corner of the campus library. Somewhere hidden underneath all the paper were some reference books that she had pulled off the shelves, blowing a thin layer of dust off their covers as she did so. The books were old, using sources that were even older, which was her own fault for waiting so long to get the reference books out in the first place. All of the more modern ones had been taken out or reserved. These older ones were more focused on the military strategy and the battles that the Captain had been involved in, rather than full of new and interesting details about him. In many ways, that was helpful, she could always search him online to find out more information, but there was only so many times she could read about the Battle of Azzano without wanting to slam her head against the desk. 

She sat up straight in the uncomfortable chair, leaning as far over the back as she could in order to force a crack of her spine. That done, she cracked her knuckles and took a long drink of water from the bottle on the floor next to her. She pulled the glasses from her face, dropped them on the open pages of the book in front of her and rubbed at her tired eyes. She blearily looked around the quiet library, eyes skimming over other students all staring at laptop screens or thick, dusty reference books with the wide eyed stare of people staring down the barrel of a gun. Not for the first time, Rosie wondered why people did this to themselves, who wants to spend thousands on four or five years of no sleep, constant tiredness, stress and the occasional weekend drinking spree only to come out of it with a piece of paper saying that they had studied a subject and passed a couple of standardised tests? Idiots, that’s who. 

Sighing to herself, she pulled her glasses back on and tried to focus on the page in front of her again, but the longer she looked at it, the more the words started to resemble worms wriggling across the page. Suddenly, she slammed the book shut. She needed a proper break. Quickly, and as quietly as she could, she gathered all of her many papers together, deciding to worry about the order of them later, carefully placed her glasses into the case she had bought only a week ago and was already looking much worse for wear, stacking the books in a pile and shoving everything that was hers into her bag. She moved away from the table, her arms wrapped around the stack of books and her bag sliding down from her shoulder. She soon found the returns cart and carefully lowered her stack onto the top shelf. Then she made a dash for the door. Once outside, she took a deep, long inhale of the fresh air and smiled. While she loved libraries, they could be so stuffy. She started off down the sidewalk, trying to multitask and pull her sunglasses out of her bag at the same time as not walking into anyone, and failing miserably at both of those things. New York was so crowded! It’s a wonder anyone got to where they were going at all! 

She stopped at the entrance to an alleyway and managed to finally pull her sunglasses out from her bag. She stepped back out onto the sidewalk and pushed them on. Checking her watch she realised that it was close to lunchtime and that she had been in the library for over five hours, feeling glad that she had managed to get away early enough she decided to treat herself to a muffin and a good, strong coffee. The crowd pulled her along slightly as she looked up at the sky and admired the architecture of the older buildings. She hadn’t been walking too long before she came across a small coffee shop that looked surprisingly quiet for the middle of one of the busiest cities in the world. She manoeuvred her way out of the crowd and pushed the door open, instantly being hit by the smell of coffee and coffee beans. She pushed her sunglasses up to the top of her head and stepped up to the counter, where a young girl stood ready to take her order. She quickly ordered a black coffee and a blueberry muffin and moved to the end of the counter. After a short wait she moved to one of the small tables where she pulled out some of the papers from the library and her reading glasses. She started to review her notes, marking the pages where she found a point that she could expand on or crossing out points that seemed irrelevant on second reading. 

She had been working quietly for only a few minutes when the door to the coffee shop opened again, allowing the sounds of the street outside in for a few brief seconds. Then the door was shut and the shop dropped into near silence again. A quiet voice could be heard placing an order and then the sound of the machinery whirring to life. Rosie crossed out another two points that she had repeated in her notes and moved to another sheet of paper. She was so engrossed that she missed the person walking past her until they had settled themselves at the table in front of hers. She looked up at the sound of a chair being dragged along the floor and found a man wincing in apology at her. He mouthed the word ‘Sorry!’ before dropping into the seat and pulling out a book from his jacket. She looked at him for a few seconds longer, eyes roaming over his strong features and blond hair, before the recognition sank in and she felt her stomach drop. As quietly as she could she picked up her phone, turned the vibrate off, and sent a quick text. 

To: Amara  
HOLY FUCKING FUCK CAPTAIN AMERICA IS IN THE COFFEE SHOP THAT IM IN!!!!???? 

From: Amara  
OMG!! Why are you in a coffee shop? I thought you were in the library?

To: Amara  
Not helpful! Should I go and say hi? Or would that be weird?

From: Amara  
Everything you do is already weird, might as well go big with it. Maybe he can give you an interview for your paper? 

Rosie rolled her eyes at her phone while stealing quick glances up at Captain America who, thankfully, had not noticed the commotion he had caused at her table. Either that or he was ignoring it, like a gentleman. 

To: Amara  
It’s fine. I’ll leave it. He probably just wants some peace and quiet. 

From: Amara  
Chicken. 

Rosie quickly stuffed her phone back into her pocket and picked her pen up again, but she couldn’t seem to concentrate on the words in front of her. Instead her attention kept being pulled back to the Captain, who was still engrossed in his book and whose foot kept tapping on the floor. His hair was longer than in some of the photographs she had seen of him, and it suited him, as did the beard that was beginning to fill in across his jaw and cheeks. He was a very handsome man. Rosie could feel a flush forming under her skin, so she dragged her eyes away from the man before her and back to her notes. She spent another few minutes reading through them and highlighting certain passages that she would need for the essay, when a voice sounded from by her elbow. 

“Do you want a refill?”

She looked up quickly, her neck cracking with the force of the movement. The young girl from behind the counter stood next to her, one hand raised and pointing at the cup by Rosie’s elbow, and a slightly wide eyed expression on her face. Rosie turned and looked at the cup, which was half full and probably cold by now, before turning back to the girl. 

“Oh, yes please. That would be great.”

The girl, whose name tag identified her as Sami, smiled, picked up the cup and moved back around the counter. Rosie turned back to her papers, stealing a quick look at the Captain as she did so. To her horror and mortification he was looking right at her, with a small smile playing on his lips. She smiled at him and bent her head to her papers again, cheeks burning all the while. There were a few seconds of silence before it was broken by a throat being cleared. 

“That’s a lot of notes you’ve got there.”

Rosie looked up at him, her vision blurring slightly through her reading glasses. She pushed them up onto her head and saw the Captain staring at her, the small smile still present on his face. He nodded his head at the table;

“Must be a big project.”

She coughed and sat up straighter in her seat. 

“Yeah, big term paper. And I’ve left it way too late to start so now I’m panicking.”

He chuckled, nodding his head once as he did so. 

“What’s the paper on?” 

“A leading figure of American history.”

He raised one eyebrow, at the same moment as Sami appeared at Rosie’s elbow again, carefully laying her fresh coffee down on the table. Rosie looked up at her and smiled her thanks. She turned back to look at Captain America. 

“Who’d you pick?”

If the floor had opened her up and swallowed her whole, Rosie would have been grateful. She could feel that her whole face was hot enough to fry an egg on, and her mouth had dropped open slightly. She slammed her jaw shut, and started shuffling the papers in no particular order, coughing slightly as she did so. 

“Oh y’know, just a person. Quite well known. American. Fits all the criteria. So you’d think it would be easy doing all this research but all of the sources are from the 70’s and 80’s. Which are a bit, well, outdated.”

She trailed off as she noticed him watching her with an even larger smile on his face. God, there was nothing in all of her research that said he was so annoying. He closed his book, one finger holding his place, before leaning forward on his folded arms.

“Y’know, that didn’t answer my question.”

She gritted her teeth together, there was absolutely no way that she was just going to admit to Captain freaking America that her term paper, that is worth 60% of her final grade, thank you very much, is all about him! Absolutely no way.

“It’s about you, actually.”

Nice. Smooth. Once again, she felt the flush creeping up her neck and burning the tops of her ears. She wondered how quickly she could gather up all of her papers and run out of the building before he answered or left. Knowing her luck she would forget something, so would have to come back and she couldn’t face that. Maybe, if she stayed really still, and didn’t say anything, maybe he would forget she was there and she could continue to work in peace.

“Oh. That’s flattering, thank you. But why are all of the sources you’re using from the 70’s and 80’s?”

“Because all of the more modern sources were taken already. I mean, I mentioned my complete lack of preparedness didn’t I?”

He continued to smile at her, which made her feel slightly less embarrassed but only marginally. This could possibly be the most cringeworthy encounter with anyone that she could possibly have, and the fact that he was still smiling was doing nothing to make her feel any better about the situation. 

“I think I heard something about that, yeah. Something about leaving it all to the last minute and now panicking, right?”

Rosie let out a small giggle, feeling the skin around her eyes scrunching as she did so. God, this was embarrassing, was she thirteen years old or something? She sat up straight again, looking Captain America right in the eyes, whilst trying to carefully shove the papers back into her bag along with her glasses case and her phone. 

“Something like that, yeah. But hey, I’ve made my bed right?”

She looked back over towards him, only to find him still smiling at her. Somehow, the sight gave her the courage to pull a scrap piece of paper out of her bag, scrawl her name and number onto it, and then move to stand next to his table. As he looked up at her, her breath seemed to catch in her chest and she had to force herself to continue. 

“Can I ask a favour? It would be really great to get something different for this essay and it would be even better if that something different was actually some information from you. So, would you be interested in sitting down with me, maybe once or twice so that I could ask you some questions about your life and your experiences? Just for this essay, nothing else!”

His eyebrows seemed to be in danger of disappearing into his hairline, and his mouth had dropped into a small ‘o’ shape. But there was no sound coming out of it. As the acid in her stomach started to churn and sweat broke out on her forehead, Rosie barreled on.

“You absolutely don’t have to, you can tell me to fuck off right now if you want to but it would just be really neat if you did. But it’s cool. It’s whatever, y’know.”

And now the sweat was starting to run down her back. It was time for a quick getaway. Rosie threw the scrap of paper with her number on it down on the tabletop in front of the still confused Captain America, stepped backwards and pulled her bag off her own table, nearly knocking the chair to the floor as she did so. She caught the chair before it dropped and set it back upright, before turning and making a dash for the door. She had just enough time to turn back to him and call out over her shoulder;

“Call me if you change your mind!”

Before the door slammed shut behind her and she was caught up in the tide of people on the street.

**************************************************************************  
“You did what now?”

Rosie thunked her head back onto the table top, eyes screwed up tight in a vague attempt to block the memory from replaying itself against her eyelids. She’d immediately run back to the apartment to find Amara and tell her what had happened in the coffee shop, she still couldn’t quite believe that she had had the stones to ask Captain America if she could interview him for her paper, but she also couldn’t quite believe that he hadn’t immediately said no. That was a positive she could take from the situation, at least. She would just have to start researching somebody new now, or maybe just tell her professor that it was absolutely impossible for her to complete this piece of work and was there an arrangement they could come to to make sure that she still got a grade but maybe just for something else. That’s how it seemed to work in porn anyway.

Amara didn’t seem to think that was the way forward however. 

“So, you asked Captain America if you could interview him, threw your number at him and left without paying for your coffee refill? That’s really smooth, even for you Rosie.”

“I know, I hate myself. It was really good coffee as well, I feel bad that I ran out without paying. I’ll go back tomorrow and pay for it, but I just got too embarrassed.”

“That is definitely not the part you should be focusing on right now.”

Rosie lifted her head just enough to glare at Amara, who smiled back, before thunking her head back onto the table. 

“And you need to stop doing that as well, you’ll give yourself concussion and then you’ll be of no use to anybody.”

“I’m of no use to anybody now! A concussion won’t change that. God, I’m such an idiot. I’m going to have to find somebody else to write about now, or just write the most boring paper about Captain America’s military strategy in WW2 and just hope that no one actually cares.”

She huffed out a sigh and pulled her laptop towards her, opening up the search engine and typing in any name that she could think of. Hopefully, this would turn into something easy that she could type up.

****************************************************************************

It had been a week since what Rosie had taken to calling the “unfortunate incident” which Amara had pointed out made it sound like somebody had died rather than Rosie getting mildly embarrassed, but what did she know. Rosie hadn’t been able to find anyone else to write her essay about and had resigned herself to months of military strategy and sponging off her American friends for any facts that they might remember about Captain America. There had been a couple of nights spent in the library where she had made a deal with the cute guy behind the desk that whenever anyone returned a book about Captain America he would allow her to look it over before he informed the next person in the queue that it was available, so she did have some more information that was not 40 years old and seemed to have come from after the discovery of Steve in the ice. 

So, all in all, the week could have gone better but it most definitely could have gone a lot worse, so Rosie decided that was a winner. And to celebrate, she had decided to take the night off from reading and making notes, but was instead trawling through the internet for videos of Steve, any interviews that he may have given, or any documentaries that were made about him, anything that could liven up her essay. Amara was on a date, so Rosie had the entire apartment to herself, which she took advantage of by planting herself on the sofa with her water bottle and phone on the small side table and a big bag of potato chips next to her.

She was just settling down to watch a documentary about the opening of the Captain America exhibition in the Smithsonian when the phone vibrated next to her on the wooden table top. Rosie jumped, arms jerking out slightly and knocking into the water bottle. The bottle dropped to the floor and she tried to catch it before it made contact. She sat upright, bottle in hand and looked at the offending phone, which was still vibrating happily on the table. The screen showed a number that she did not recognise, making her not want to answer it. Placing the bottle upright on the table, she picked the phone up with the other hand. After a minute, it stopped vibrating. She stared at the screen for a few more seconds, before placing it gingerly back onto the table. Probably just a wrong number, or one of those scam callers that she would have to avoid anyway. The phone was still for a few minutes, before it started to buzz violently again. She checked the screen and saw the same number as before. She was torn between answering it and just blocking the number straight away. She plucked up her courage, picked up the phone and swiped to answer it. 

“Hello?”

The line was quiet for a few seconds and she was about to end the call when a faint voice came over the line, as if they were speaking to the phone from another room. 

“Hello? Is this Rosie?”

Her heart was racing in her chest. She didn’t know of any scam callers that would call her by her first name. But then again, what would she know about scams. 

“Maybe. Who’s asking?”

The silence stretched over the line, once again giving her the idea to just end the call before the voice came back, stronger this time. 

“Steve Rogers. You gave me your number last week? In the coffee shop?” 

She gaped slightly, her mind racing over each possible answer she could give. 

“Oh. I didn’t think you’d actually call.”

“Me neither, to be honest.” 

There was a rustling over the line, like Steve was getting himself comfortable to prepare for the conversation. Rosie was still trying to get her brain to fire properly and, moving her laptop onto the seat next to her, stood up and paced slightly. 

“So. Have you made a decision about if you want to chat to me?”

The line went quiet again, Rosie pulled the phone away from her ear to check the line hadn’t dropped and then brought it back. Still connected, but just connected to someone who seemed to enjoy leaving people in suspense apparently. 

“Yeah, I have. And I do want to have a chat with you. Y’know, to air some feelings that I have. But I don’t want this to turn into a bestselling tell-all book about me.”

She rolled her eyes. 

“Look, buddy, I’m barely managing the coursework I’ve got this semester as it is, where have I got the time to write a bestseller?”

Steve huffed a laugh, and the shuffling resumed. It was on the tip of Rosie’s tongue to ask what he was doing but she held back, knowing that she still didn’t have his full support for her project. She took a deep breath and then plunged in at the deep end.

“Look, I get why you’re unsure, I would be too. And I never would have asked you for an interview if I actually wanted to screw you over. I’m still amazed that I did ask you to be honest, normally I chicken out at stuff like that. But I really think that this paper could be something interesting, because it would have something different in it and that’s your voice. So, if you’re up for it then great, if not then you can delete my number and we never have to speak about this to anyone.”

There was silence at the end of the line again. Rosie was about to abandon all hope when Steve heaved a sigh and resumed his shuffling. 

“Well, when you put it like that, how can I say no? When do you want to meet?”

Rosie silently jumped up and down, pumping her fist repeatedly before settling down to answer the question.

“We could meet on Tuesday? I’ll let you pick where?”

“How about the coffee shop at 11am? It’s common ground at least and you can pay me back for the coffee I paid for from the last time.”

Rosie closed her eyes, she had hoped that that would never be mentioned again, how she had gone back to the coffee shop the day after meeting Steve, fully intending to pay for the coffee, only to have Sami tell her that it had already been taken care of by Steve himself. Well, at least she now had the opportunity to pay him back.

“Sounds good. I’ll see you then, unless you text me to tell me anything different.”

“Alright. See you then.”

“Bye.”

The line went silent as they mutually ended the call. Rosie watched the screen flash back to her wallpaper, carefully set it on the table again, before walking back over to the sofa, picking up one of Amara’s many scatter cushions. Then she held it to her face and let out a hysterical scream of delight. She had an interview with Steve-fucking-Rogers!


End file.
